Three meetings scheduled for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Central Asian countries this week will enable the Minister of External Affairs to Jaishankar to compare records of a rapidly growing situation in Afghanistan with the other person from several major countries.
Jaishankar will visit Central Asian countries against the increasingly alarming background in the region of the Taliban violence campaign aimed at capturing the region while extending peace negotiations aimed at finding political settlement.
He will visit Tajikistan for July 13-14 at the invitation of Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin to participate in the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation (SCO) cooperation organization. On the second day of the visit, he will take part in the group meeting contact SCO in Afghanistan.
Jaisankar will then travel to Uzbekistan to participate in a conference on regional trade, transportation and connectivity in Tashkent for July 15-16. He is expected to meet several main talk links on the conference margin with the theme “Central and South Asia: regional connectivity. Challenges and opportunities”.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will attend the three events, but people who are familiar with the development of the terms of anonymity that no bilateral meeting with Jaisankar has lined up.
Although the main item in the agenda of the Meeting of the Foreign Minister SCO is a preparation for the SCO head meeting which will be held in Dushanbe for September 16-17, the people quoted above, adding that the situation in Afghanistan is expected to stand out in the discussion.
Afghanistan has an observer status with SCO, which includes India, Kazakhstan, China, Kirgiz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan Afghanistan Minister Haneef Atmar is expected to participate in both meetings in Dushan.
Although the focus of conference in Uzbekistan is in regional trade and connectivity, the existence of peak leaders will provide an opportunity for India to discuss situations in Afghanistan on the meeting margin. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is expected to attend a meeting in Tashkent.
The Uzbek government is interested in blocking the Indian and Pakistani Prime Minister for a meeting in Tashkent, but both countries will be represented by their foreign ministers. Representatives of China, Russia, Iran, the European Union and the US will also participate in the meeting.
India has expressed strong concern about the level of violence in Afghanistan and Jaisanhar, asserted the need for a legitimate government in Kabul during a press conference along with his colleague Russia, Sergey Lavrov in Moscow last week. Russia has its own concern about violence in Afghanistan spilling to Central Asian countries.
